Interesting question. It's possible for agencies to set up private clouds -- managed data centers within their network domain, where users buy by the drink -- which must be meet Federal Information Security Management Act standards, but which don't necessarily have to get FedRAMP approved. FedRAMP is largerly aimed at 3rd party cloud service providers who host govt systems on secured, multi-tenant platforms.

I think OMB's ability to control budgets, and hold agency execs accountable for IT investments, allows them to put pressure to agencies to get moving to the cloud to save money. Agency lawyers, that must follow the FISMA law and ensure security are also under pressure to hold the line and keep systems secure. Who's got the upper hand probably depends agenc by agency.

Pete, you rasise an interesting point, now that credit card industry has suffered a sereis of massive breaches, FedRAMP is likely to get even greater attention than it might have a few months ago relative to FedRAMP offers. PCI, ISO, CSA, and SOC1/2 standards. Thanks for weighing in. Good luck with your FedRAMP certification!

Wyatt nailed it with this article. If we didn't recently do a bug sweep in our conference rooms, I would have suspected that he was listening in to some of our recent conversations! As a leading CSP in the final stages of the FedRAMP process, our large Enterprise accounts are starting to pay attention to the additional security controls that FedRAMP offers. They are requesting we provide certain capabilities that are beyond PCI, ISO, CSA, and SOC1/2 compliance. In light of the recent breeches of PCI certified companies, the realization is that increasing certain security controls and implementing the continuous monitoring aspects of FedRAMP are far cheaper than a breech. Our company is making very significant investments and realizing good success in this area. FedRAMP sets a high bar... but we believe the bar should be higher in certain areas that we're also addressing. I'm looking forward to more insight from Wyatt.

In this report, we'll examine the use of cloud services by government IT, including the requirements, executive initiatives and service qualifications, and auditing and procurement programs that make government cloud adoption unlike that in the private sector.